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Councillor and former mayor Rob Ford will lie in repose at the heart of city hall in a visitation open to the public ahead of a full funeral procession next week.

That civic honour for the controversial former mayor — at the request of Ford’s family with Mayor John Tory’s blessing — is an unprecedented event in Toronto’s history. Two sitting mayors, but never a former mayor, have been given a public memorial at city hall.

“Councillor Ford’s family wishes to express their gratitude for the thousands of messages of support they have received from around the world,” said a statement from his office Wednesday afternoon, a day after Ford, 46, died at Mount Sinai Hospital from a rare and aggressive cancer.

“As difficult as it is to say goodbye, they would like to do so in the same manner in which he lived his life, by sharing it with the people.”

City hall, which is normally closed Easter Monday, will open its doors for Ford’s casket and his family at 9 a.m. Visitors will be allowed in from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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Ford’s body will remain the next day, March 29, with visitation from 7:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

On March 30, a procession is planned from city hall to St. James Cathedral on Church St. for a lunchtime funeral service.

Following the funeral, the Ford family will host a “celebration of Councillor Ford’s life” at the Toronto Congress Centre in Etobicoke starting at 6:30 p.m., where video clips, to be submitted by the public, will be played.

It's unclear what if any costs to the city the visitation will trigger.

A regular council meeting, which was scheduled to start March 30, will be moved to March 31 to accommodate the funeral, according to a city statement.

Reacting to news of the memorials online, some questioned Ford being honoured at city hall after he was found to have repeatedly broken conflict of interest rules and council’s code of conduct and was accused of drinking in his city hall office, verbally and physically abusing former staffers and frequently missing work as mayor.

The rotunda at city hall has played host before.

In Toronto’s pre-amalgamation days, two sitting mayors who died in office had public visitations at what is now Old City Hall; Samuel McBride, who died in office in 1936, and Donald D Summerville, who died in 1963, a year into his term.

Samuel McBride was the first Toronto mayor to die in office. He died November 1936 after suffering a stroke at age 70.

According to the forthcoming book A History of the Mayors of Toronto by Mark Maloney, at the time of McBride’s death officials “had no precedent upon which to base arrangements for a civic funeral” and council “decided that city hall was the appropriate place for citizens to mourn a mayor who had been raised in the adjacent hard scrabble neighbourhood called the The Ward and who had been intimately involved in local politics for 30 years.”

His body lay in repose the day before his funeral, according to an article in the Star, the casket positioned at the bottom of Old City Hall’s grand staircase.

“Citizens from every walk of life and from ever denomination, in spontaneous communal mourning,” attended to shuffle past the open casket after queuing for hours on Queen St., the Star article said.

Nearly 30 years later, in November 1963, then mayor Donald D. Summerville died of a heart attack just a year into his term. The 48-year-old collapsed off the ice following a charity hockey game where he played in goal against city hall’s press gallery.

Two days later, thousands turned out to the second-floor council chamber at Old City Hall where Summerville lay in repose before a funeral at St. James Cathedral.

“The city clerk’s office said citizens were filing through the council chamber at the rate of 3,600 an hour, or one every second,” a Star article said about the visitation.

In 1905, another mayor, Edward Clarke, was granted a civic funeral by a special vote of what was then the council’s board of control after his term in office had ended, according to a report in the Star. Clarke also lay in repose, though not at city hall. His funeral and visitation were held at the Reformed Episcopal church at College and Lippincott streets.

In 2011, thousands filed past the flag-draped casket of the late federal NDP leader and former Toronto councillor Jack Layton.

Layton’s body lay at city hall as part of several public services in Ottawa and Toronto organized by Heritage Canada. Former prime minister Stephen Harper declared a state funeral for the beloved politician and opposition leader who spent much of his life in this city.

That tribute had the blessing of then mayor Ford, who served as a councillor alongside both Layton and his widow Olivia Chow.

Layton’s state funeral and lying-in-state were a rare exception to federal tradition typically reserved for current and former prime ministers, governor generals and sitting ministers.

Federally, a state funeral for “any eminent Canadian” can be offered “at the discretion of the prime minister,” according to a Government of Canada website.

Lying in state differs from lying in repose, said city spokesperson Jackie DeSouza, in that it means lying in an official federal state building such as Parliament.

In Toronto, there is no written protocol for who is entitled to lie in repose, and there is little precedence of requests.

Only three mayors who have been in office after 1963 have died. The deaths of interim mayor Fred Beavis and mayors Philip Givens and William Dennison all came after their mayoral terms. None of them lay in repose.

The statement from Ford’s office said his family thanked Tory “for allowing Councillor Ford to lie in repose at city hall.”

Tory’s office confirmed the arrangements were approved by the mayor.

Clarification - March 24, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version to make clear that only three Toronto mayors who have been in office after 1963 have died.

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